Hey guys If anyone is interested I have officially started my KR. After reviewing and hammering over the plans, I have begun my journey. For about two years I have been the plumbing foreman in charge of remodeling the old Allis Chalmers manufacturing plant in Milwaukee Wisconsin. In that time I have managed to become friends with some of the architects of the project. I was talking to them about my aspirations of homebuilding when one of them asked what the plane is made out of. After a long discussion he asked me if doug fir would work for the primary structure.
This is where the fun began. He took me over to the warehouse where they saved some of the really neat historic kind of stuff. There sat a 2' x 2' doug fir beam 19'3'' long. Brushing off 80 years of dirt and dust I discovered the entire beam is 1/4 sawn. As a matter of fact it is perfect 90 deg. grain, so perfect the grain runs parallel from end to end. Long story short, he gave it to me. I had a buddy crane it on a flatbed and I took it and had an Amish friend who owns a sawmill, bandsaw it into sections. After that I cut a few sections of 1" and had it ran through my fathers cnc sander. Are you ready for this? The entire beam is perfect. The whole beam is 100% clear, not even a slight disruption of grain, zero knots. And to make matters even better the growth rings average 27 rings per inch. The worst grain in the beam has about 23 rings per inch, the best being 33. What a break! It's kind of neat to build a plane out of wood with a bit of history to it. I have now begun cutting and sanding all of the dimensions. :) Mike Johnson
